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Early Heidegger's Transition from Life to Being

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University of Kentucky UKnowledge University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2009 EARLY HEIDEGGER'S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu University of Kentucky, [email protected] Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Lepadatu, Gilbert Vasile, "EARLY HEIDEGGER'S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING" (2009). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 725. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/725 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2009 EARLY HEIDEGGER’S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING ____________________________________________________ ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION ___________________________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu Lexington, KY Chair: Dr. Ronald Bruzina, Professor of Philosophy Lexington, KY 2009 Copyright © Gilbert V. Lepadatu 2009 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION EARLY HEIDEGGER’S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING Heidegger was not always preoccupied, as he himself would later come to believe, with the question regarding the sense of being. Eight years before he published his magnum opus, Sein und Zeit, in 1927 he was totally devoted to finding a systematic way to bringing “life” as the ultimate source of meaning to explicate itself. In the years between 1919-1923, “life”, and not “being”, is the matter of philosophy par excellence, only to be disregarded, even refuted as a “proper” matter of philosophy in the subsequent years. In this paper I examine the philosophical motives that led Heidegger from life to being. The purpose of this project isto trace the emergence of the “thinking of being” in “life philosophy.” I will show that the transition from “life” to “being” is not at all as radical as Heidegger wants it to be whenever he voices his concerns about the metaphysical grounds of life philosophy. When “life” is understood in the exact terms in which Heidegger himself understands it in the years between 1919-1923 then, I argue, the transition to being is more a radicalization, and by no means an abandonment, of life philosophy. In the process of elaborating an understanding of life so fundamentally sympathetic to life that it can claim itself to be life’s own self-understanding, Heidegger comes gradually to realize the importance of life’s own way of living understandingly, the performative sense in which it [life] itself understands itself to be, for the very effort to understand life. Life is now interpreted as a way of being for which this very being, its way of being, is an issue for itself. In the first chapter I go back to the original motives that led Heidegger to choose life, lived experience, as the proper topic of philosophy. It is here that Heidegger discovers that philosophy is ultimately about an entity that is somehow concerned with itself already in being-engaged to “something” other than itself. Intentionality is interpreted as the manner in which an entity is playing itself out, as it were, in engaging a world. In the second chapter, I follow his elaborations of this newly discovered topic, the “personal” character of experience, with a focus on the unique way in which he develops it by both rejecting the Neokantian approach to life and by critically appropriating Dilthey’s conception of lived experience. The third chapter presents Heidegger’s “insights” into life – which will remain unchanged, only put to different uses when the topic changes from life to being. The fourth chapter takes up the issue of how life is (and is itself)in being referred to its own past. Here I show how life is found to be “in need” to appropriate what it has been as the way in which it can be itself. Chapters five and six delve into the proper relation between living and philosophizing by focusing on how life is living-in-understanding. It is shown here how Heidegger elaborates, unfortunately insufficiently, his method of “formal indicators” which will enable him to interpret life as a “way of being.” Such interpretation leaves open the possibility, however, of either interpreting life as the manner in which being itself can be experienced or, as Heidegger does in the first early years, or interpreting being as the manner in which life can come to itself. Early Heidegger can only justify the former interpretation: in developing for itself a sense of being which can only be performed as a way in which life lives, life develops a genuine self-understanding. KEYWORDS: Martin Heidegger, Life, Lived Experience, Being, Life Philosophy Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu May 22th, 2009 EARLY HEIDEGGER’S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING By Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu Ronald Bruzina, Ph.D. Director of Dissertation Arnold Farr, Ph.D. Director of Graduate Studies 06/09/2009 RULES FOR THE USE OF DISSERTATIONS Unpublished theses submitted for the Doctor’s degree and deposited in the University of Kentucky Library are as a rule open for inspection, but are to be used only with due regards to the rights of authors. Bibliographical references may be noted, but quotations or summaries of parts may be published only with the permission of the author, and with the usual scholarly acknowledgments. Extensive copying or publication of the dissertation in whole or in part also requires the consent of the Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Kentucky. A library that borrows this dissertation for use by its patrons is expected to secure the signature of each user. Name Date ________________________________________________________________________ DISSERTATION Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2009 EARLY HEIDEGGER’S TRANSITION FROM LIFE TO BEING ______________________________________________________ DISSERTATION ______________________________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Gilbert V. Lepadatu Lexington, KY Chair: Dr. Ronald Bruzina, Professor of Philosophy Lexington, KY 2009 Copyright © Gilbert V. Lepadatu 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation benefited tremendously from the suggestions and guidance of Prof. Ronald Bruzina. I could never thank him enough for the effort he put into, and the patience he had to, helping me bring the dissertation to completion. Special thanks should also go to all the members of my dissertation committee: Prof. Daniel Breazeale, Prof. Ted Schatzki and Prof. Michael Jones. Their help made the defense of the dissertation easier than it could have been. Thanks to my wife, Darina, my lifeline in time of despair and the source of my determination, whose love will always be enough to keep me going… To my parents, Vasile and Dumitrita, whose long-life support and unspeakable sacrifices to see me achieve the highest academic level should have shamed anyone into giving their best. To my girl, Maya, who made me want be a better person... To all of you, my love and gratitude. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................... iii Chapter One: Introduction .....................................................................................................................6 Otto Pöggeler’s “Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers” .......................................................... 13 Kisiel’s “Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time”............................................................... 15 Rüdiger Safranski’s “Ein Meister aus Deutschland”........................................................... 16 Chapter Two: Erlebnis ‐ the “living of something” or living experience..........................19 Why Erlebnis?..................................................................................................................................... 19 A science of Erlebnisse ................................................................................................................... 31 A (non‐theoretical) science of lived experiences................................................................ 40 The theoretical attitude.................................................................................................................. 43 Phenomenology as the pre‐theoretical science of lived experiences......................... 47 Erlebnis, Situation and Ereignis ................................................................................................. 61 Conclusion............................................................................................................................................ 64 Chapter Three: From Erlebnis to Lebenserfahrung...................................................................68 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 68 From Erlebnis to Lebenserfahrung..........................................................................................
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